Felix Prince of Cats and Mitch the Great Storm of the Century

We did not spend the first night at the cottage due to the unexpected ferocity of the winds and surf.  How could a storm of this magnitude come upon us so suddenly and virtually without warning?  All that aside we packed up food, blankets, clothing and our brood of unwilling-to-travel-in-an-automobile cats, who were in a most nervous state as cats are famous for.  It was a major undertaking, gathering  them and putting them into boxes for safekeeping during the trip.

By the time we had the auto packed and were ready for the cats, the storm had taken on the character of an apocalyptic menace.  I was racing between the house and the auto nearly blinded by the driving rain, across terrain barely visible in the light of my electric torch.  I was disoriented at times because of the unfamiliar conditions, the winds distorting all that was once a friendly landscape.  Stumbling blindly, house to car, carrying terrified kittens and a crying Buddy, who did not want to leave his home.  If any of them managed to run out into this terrible night I was sure we would never see them again.

Things were getting desperate and the last one to be loaded was Felix.  Good old Felix!  He came through like a champion.  He was the epitome of cooperation and the only one that did not protest.  Once in the auto he was content to snuggle his head under Mistress G’s arm and rode quietly while all the others were wailing in their death throws.

I had difficulty reminding myself that I was in the tropics, because what I saw through the windscreen looked like a snowstorm.  Torrents of rain made the going precarious.  Every kind of flying debris hampered visibility, leaves off the trees, low bent branches trashing at our windows and the flood falling from the sky.

The trees were swirling so erratically we were concerned about being trapped should some of them fall across the roadway and leave us  blocked in or worse, stuck out there in the night unable to reach any safe shelter.  Nevertheless, on we went, determined to get away from the treacherous conditions of the coastal areas.

As I drove on hoping to cross over onto the more sheltered side of the island, something unusual sprang from my memory of long ago.  We frequently sang a hymn at morning chapel when I was a midshipman in the Navy.  The first stanza had special meanings as I recalled an unforgettable experience of once being in a typhoon at sea and now, our shoreline rapidly approaching the bluff on which our house was perched.  I will recite it for those of you who may love this verse and beautiful hymn as I do.

                        “ETERNAL FATHER! STRONG TO SAVE;
                        WHOSE ARM HATH BOUND THE RESTLESS WAVE,
                        WHO BID’ST THE MIGHTY OCEAN DEEP
                        ITS OWN APPOINTED LIMITS KEEP;
                        OH, HEAR US WHEN WE CRY TO THEE
                        FOR THOSE IN PERIL ON THE SEA!”

Neither of us spoke until we had arrived at the building housing the studio.  As we left the beach area some of the lines of the hymn kept resounding in my head, about the oceans keeping to their own limits, praying to myself that all our friends would be spared any tragic endings.  And, I asked that they and our home would not be harmed by the events unfolding on this unforgettable night.